The results were not especially reassuring. Nearly half of the respondents (48%) predicted that robots and AI will displace more jobs than they create over the coming decade. While that left a slim majority believing the impact of technology on employment will be neutral or positive, that's not necessarily grounds for comfort: Many experts told Pew they expect the jobs created by the rise of the machines will be lower paying and less secure than the ones displaced, widening the gap between rich and poor, while others said they simply don't think the major effects of robots and AI, for better or worse, will be in evidence yet by 2025.

Honda's ASIMO (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One point of consensus: There will be abundant jobs for engineers who work with robots and smart devices. For the less technologically inclined, the most secure occupations will likely be in fields that require a human touch -- Watson may read your X-rays, but it won't replace your psychotherapist -- or in the artisanal production of small-batch goods, whose cachet will continue to increase as technology seeps into ever more areas of our lives.

As Judith Donath, a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, puts it, "Live, human salespeople, nurses, doctors, actors will be symbols of luxury, the silk of human interaction as opposed to the polyester of simulated human contact."

A few other choice quotes from the report:

Jamais Cascio, a writer and futurist specializing in possible futures scenario outcomes: "By 2025, robots/AI (although likely not ‘true’ self-aware autonomous constructed intelligence) will start to become background noise in the day-to-day lives of people in the post-industrial world. From self-driving taxis to garbage collectors to autonomous service systems, machines will start to exist in our social space the way that low-paid (often immigrant) human workers do now: visible but ignorable."

Amy Webb, CEO of strategy firm Webbmedia Group: There is a general concern that the robots are taking over. I disagree that our emerging technologies will permanently displace most of the workforce, though I'd argue that jobs will shift into other sectors. Now more than ever, an army of talented coders is needed to help our technology advance. But we will still need folks to do packaging, assembly, sales, and outreach. The collar of the future is a hoodie."

Stowe Boyd, Gigaom Research: "Robotic sex partners will be a commonplace, although the source of scorn and division, the way that critics today bemoan selfies as an indicator of all that's wrong with the world."

Justin Reich, Harvard's Berkman Center: "There will be a labor market in the service sector for non-routine tasks that can be performed interchangeably by just about anyone—and these will not pay a living wage—and there will be some new opportunities created for complex non-routine work, but the gains at this top of the labor market will not be offset by losses in the middle and gains of terrible jobs at the bottom. I'm not sure that jobs will disappear altogether, though that seems possible, but the jobs that are left will be lower paying and less secure than those that exist now. The middle is moving to the bottom."